March on Washington commemorated by thousands gathering at Lincoln Memorial, A half-century to the day the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his clarion call for justice from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, thousands began to reconvene near that spot Wednesday, under cloudy skies and amid hope and frustration about the current state of race relations in America.
The plans to honor one of the nation’s high-water marks of peaceful protest and rhetorical triumph included church services, national bell ringing and a crammed roster of speakers including two former presidents and Oprah Winfrey. The lineup culminates in the afternoon when the country’s first African American president addresses the world from the marble steps that King sanctified for eternity.
Some celebrants set off on the actual path of the 250,000 who marched on Aug. 28, 1963, retracing the footfalls that helped begin a cultural earthquake and eventually shook apart the bulwarks of legal discrimination against African Americans. There were long lines at the security checkpoints, and some people were treated for heated-related conditions by medical personnel.
Umbrellas and ponchos took the place of mid-century fedoras and skinny ties. But some still talked of recapturing the mood of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, an event that has been described as a day of euphoria amid the chaos and clashes of the 1960s. And they spoke of reclaiming the unfinished business of the movement at a time when African Americans still lag far behind whites on economic and educational attainment.
“Fifty years ago we had to convince the president to let us come. Today, the president is coming to us,” exulted Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s non-voting member of Congress, as the crowd grew around her. Back in ‘63, she was one of the young staffers organizing the march.
For marcher Tara Childs, the number of black faces she sees in unemployment offices tells her King’s dream is far from realized.
“The issues they were marching for in 1963 were economic,” said Childs, 35, co-chair of Young and Powerful, a national group of young professionals, as she headed toward the Mall. “When I see the footage, I am moved, because I feel we are still combating the same issues. The unemployment rate is still . . . disproportionately high among African Americans.”
Others were ready to celebrate five decades of racial progress that means many young people are more familiar with sharing playgrounds, classrooms and bedrooms with members of other races than with the segregation and resistance to change of King’s era.
For David Figari, the moment seemed perfect to cement his own relations across racial lines. On the steps of the Georgetown University Law Center, just before setting out on a 1.7-mile march to the Lincoln Memorial, Figari, who is white, asked Jessica Jones, who is black, to marry him. They are both 25-year- olds from Tampa.
He knelt on the steps in front of his girlfriend and held out a ring. She said yes, and their fellow marchers exploded in cheers.
Figari had planned to propose in November, when the couple would be on a ski trip together. But he changed his plans when they decided to join the commemoration of the ’63 march.
I figured this would be a little more deep,” he said. “I think our relationship brings the whole idea of the march to fruition.”
At an interfaith service Wednesday morning at Shiloh Baptist Church in Northwest Washington, faith leaders reprised King’s message in the context of their own traditions, from Sikh to Southern Baptist.
“Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that,” said Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America. Magid recalled how he leaned on King’s memory in the period of violence against Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “It brought tears to my eyes. His message of diversity is that God created all people. That we can walk together on the path of peace”
King’s legacy has formed a part of the basic curriculum at her children’s school, said Rabbi Julie Schonfield, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly. “The first history they are taught is the history of the civil rights movement.”
The day was the second major commemoration of the march this week, causing some confusion on social media by those seeking the official remembrance. The duplication reflected, in some ways, generational divisions in the civil rights community that have widened in a half century.
An event Saturday that also brought thousands to the Mall event was organized by the National Action Network, a group headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. Wednesday’s gathering featured involvement of the NAACP and other legacy civil rights groups. Both had participation from members of the King family.
Still, the lines at security checkpoints were long by noon Wednesday, despite hot muggy weather on a workday. That was an oppressive contrast to the splendid sunshine of Saturday’s event and less forgiving than the glorious summer day that greeted marchers 50 years ago. On Saturday, umbrellas were a shield against the sun. On Wednesday they were protection against the rain.
“I think it’s going to clear up,” declared Aijalon McMillian, 20, of new Brunswick, N.J., as his friend opened an umbrella in the sprinkling rain. “I think the sun’s going to come out.”
It wasn’t just rosy nostalgia that had veteran marchers remembering the day of the original gathering as just about ideal.
“By Washington standards, August 28, 1963 was an extremely pleasant summer day here, with temperatures ranging between 63 and 83 degrees, no rain, and dew points in the comfortable 50s,” said Don Lipman of the Post’s Capital Weather Gang.
Heavy skies or not, many came to note their own history with Jim Crow and, in some cases, the personal outrages that brought them to Washington 50 years ago.
Nannie Blakeney remembers when her grandmother was a housekeeper for a white family. Blakeney would play with the family’s children, but wasn’t permitted to sit down with them for lunch.
“I wanted to eat with the little girl, and they said I had to eat in the kitchen,” she said. “I kept asking my grandmother, ‘Why? Why?’ She said because if you don’t they’ll beat you.”
Blakeney was 13 when she made the trip from Virginia to the March on Washington in 1963. She heard King talk about his dream and “ thought it might come true,” she said. “We’ve come a long way. I have mixed-race grandchildren now.”
Others on the Mall Wednesday were born long after the laws that assigned bus seats and lunch spots based on the color of a customer’s skin. But the young brought their own concerns to the Mall Wednesday, from scarce jobs to rampant violence.
Antoine Pendleton, 23, said both were on his mind on this 50 anniversary.
“I’m a black male trying to succeed out here,” said Pendleton, a recent graduate of Taney Institute, a historically black college, who works at a home in Pittsburgh for people with severe disabilities. “Get the guns off the street. I’m trying to make it to the 75th anniversary.”
One of the first speakers this morning noted the political gains that flowed from the March on Washington have yet to be realized in the March’s very location: Washington, D.C.
“Full freedom and democracy were – and are – still denied to the people who literally live within sight of the Capitol dome,” said D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray (D), speaking from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial. He noted that D.C. residents, who served in the U.S. armed forces, pay federal taxes and outnumber the populations of some states, lack voting representation in Congress.
“So, today, as we remember those who gave so much half a century ago to extend the blessings of liberty to all Americans,” Gray said, “I hope you will stand with me when I say that we must allow freedom to ring from Mount St. Alban. . .rom the ridges of Anacostia. . .and. . .apitol Hill itself.”
If the marchers of 1963 would have been agog at the idea of black president five decades later, they may have been even more stunned by the hyper-merchandizing that surrounds him. The vendors were out in force Wednesday with $10 Obama piggy banks, $3 first-family tote bags and much more.
And then there was Obama himself. Two of him, if you count the cardboard cutout of the president that Catherine Nanfuka carried over her shoulder.
On Wednesday she could barely move 10 feet without being approached by someone who asked to be photographed the life-sized, but flat, president.
“It makes me so happy,” Nanfuka said. “You should see the reaction. People say ‘I can’t believe it’s free to take a picture. Here, take a dollar!” But, no, it’s free.”
Hamil Harris, DeNeen Brown, and Julie Zauzmer contributed to this story.
The plans to honor one of the nation’s high-water marks of peaceful protest and rhetorical triumph included church services, national bell ringing and a crammed roster of speakers including two former presidents and Oprah Winfrey. The lineup culminates in the afternoon when the country’s first African American president addresses the world from the marble steps that King sanctified for eternity.
Some celebrants set off on the actual path of the 250,000 who marched on Aug. 28, 1963, retracing the footfalls that helped begin a cultural earthquake and eventually shook apart the bulwarks of legal discrimination against African Americans. There were long lines at the security checkpoints, and some people were treated for heated-related conditions by medical personnel.
Umbrellas and ponchos took the place of mid-century fedoras and skinny ties. But some still talked of recapturing the mood of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, an event that has been described as a day of euphoria amid the chaos and clashes of the 1960s. And they spoke of reclaiming the unfinished business of the movement at a time when African Americans still lag far behind whites on economic and educational attainment.
“Fifty years ago we had to convince the president to let us come. Today, the president is coming to us,” exulted Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s non-voting member of Congress, as the crowd grew around her. Back in ‘63, she was one of the young staffers organizing the march.
For marcher Tara Childs, the number of black faces she sees in unemployment offices tells her King’s dream is far from realized.
“The issues they were marching for in 1963 were economic,” said Childs, 35, co-chair of Young and Powerful, a national group of young professionals, as she headed toward the Mall. “When I see the footage, I am moved, because I feel we are still combating the same issues. The unemployment rate is still . . . disproportionately high among African Americans.”
Others were ready to celebrate five decades of racial progress that means many young people are more familiar with sharing playgrounds, classrooms and bedrooms with members of other races than with the segregation and resistance to change of King’s era.
For David Figari, the moment seemed perfect to cement his own relations across racial lines. On the steps of the Georgetown University Law Center, just before setting out on a 1.7-mile march to the Lincoln Memorial, Figari, who is white, asked Jessica Jones, who is black, to marry him. They are both 25-year- olds from Tampa.
He knelt on the steps in front of his girlfriend and held out a ring. She said yes, and their fellow marchers exploded in cheers.
Figari had planned to propose in November, when the couple would be on a ski trip together. But he changed his plans when they decided to join the commemoration of the ’63 march.
I figured this would be a little more deep,” he said. “I think our relationship brings the whole idea of the march to fruition.”
At an interfaith service Wednesday morning at Shiloh Baptist Church in Northwest Washington, faith leaders reprised King’s message in the context of their own traditions, from Sikh to Southern Baptist.
“Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that,” said Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America. Magid recalled how he leaned on King’s memory in the period of violence against Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “It brought tears to my eyes. His message of diversity is that God created all people. That we can walk together on the path of peace”
King’s legacy has formed a part of the basic curriculum at her children’s school, said Rabbi Julie Schonfield, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly. “The first history they are taught is the history of the civil rights movement.”
The day was the second major commemoration of the march this week, causing some confusion on social media by those seeking the official remembrance. The duplication reflected, in some ways, generational divisions in the civil rights community that have widened in a half century.
An event Saturday that also brought thousands to the Mall event was organized by the National Action Network, a group headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. Wednesday’s gathering featured involvement of the NAACP and other legacy civil rights groups. Both had participation from members of the King family.
Still, the lines at security checkpoints were long by noon Wednesday, despite hot muggy weather on a workday. That was an oppressive contrast to the splendid sunshine of Saturday’s event and less forgiving than the glorious summer day that greeted marchers 50 years ago. On Saturday, umbrellas were a shield against the sun. On Wednesday they were protection against the rain.
“I think it’s going to clear up,” declared Aijalon McMillian, 20, of new Brunswick, N.J., as his friend opened an umbrella in the sprinkling rain. “I think the sun’s going to come out.”
It wasn’t just rosy nostalgia that had veteran marchers remembering the day of the original gathering as just about ideal.
“By Washington standards, August 28, 1963 was an extremely pleasant summer day here, with temperatures ranging between 63 and 83 degrees, no rain, and dew points in the comfortable 50s,” said Don Lipman of the Post’s Capital Weather Gang.
Heavy skies or not, many came to note their own history with Jim Crow and, in some cases, the personal outrages that brought them to Washington 50 years ago.
Nannie Blakeney remembers when her grandmother was a housekeeper for a white family. Blakeney would play with the family’s children, but wasn’t permitted to sit down with them for lunch.
“I wanted to eat with the little girl, and they said I had to eat in the kitchen,” she said. “I kept asking my grandmother, ‘Why? Why?’ She said because if you don’t they’ll beat you.”
Blakeney was 13 when she made the trip from Virginia to the March on Washington in 1963. She heard King talk about his dream and “ thought it might come true,” she said. “We’ve come a long way. I have mixed-race grandchildren now.”
Others on the Mall Wednesday were born long after the laws that assigned bus seats and lunch spots based on the color of a customer’s skin. But the young brought their own concerns to the Mall Wednesday, from scarce jobs to rampant violence.
Antoine Pendleton, 23, said both were on his mind on this 50 anniversary.
“I’m a black male trying to succeed out here,” said Pendleton, a recent graduate of Taney Institute, a historically black college, who works at a home in Pittsburgh for people with severe disabilities. “Get the guns off the street. I’m trying to make it to the 75th anniversary.”
One of the first speakers this morning noted the political gains that flowed from the March on Washington have yet to be realized in the March’s very location: Washington, D.C.
“Full freedom and democracy were – and are – still denied to the people who literally live within sight of the Capitol dome,” said D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray (D), speaking from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial. He noted that D.C. residents, who served in the U.S. armed forces, pay federal taxes and outnumber the populations of some states, lack voting representation in Congress.
“So, today, as we remember those who gave so much half a century ago to extend the blessings of liberty to all Americans,” Gray said, “I hope you will stand with me when I say that we must allow freedom to ring from Mount St. Alban. . .rom the ridges of Anacostia. . .and. . .apitol Hill itself.”
If the marchers of 1963 would have been agog at the idea of black president five decades later, they may have been even more stunned by the hyper-merchandizing that surrounds him. The vendors were out in force Wednesday with $10 Obama piggy banks, $3 first-family tote bags and much more.
And then there was Obama himself. Two of him, if you count the cardboard cutout of the president that Catherine Nanfuka carried over her shoulder.
On Wednesday she could barely move 10 feet without being approached by someone who asked to be photographed the life-sized, but flat, president.
“It makes me so happy,” Nanfuka said. “You should see the reaction. People say ‘I can’t believe it’s free to take a picture. Here, take a dollar!” But, no, it’s free.”
Hamil Harris, DeNeen Brown, and Julie Zauzmer contributed to this story.
